New West Theatre ready to entertain with outdoor performing arts series
By Al Beeber on July 6, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com After a year-and-a-half of pandemic restrictions, New West Theatre is ready to entertain audiences again.While the long-running troupe won’t be staging its two traditional summer revues at the Yates Centre – a tradition that went on hiatus last summer due to COVID – it will be staging performances in a different manner.
New West was hired by the City of Lethbridge to run an outdoors performing arts series this summer in various parks.
Artistic director Kelly Reay said Monday the series will run from July 10 until Sept. 11 in four parks, featuring local entertainers.
The performances will run from 1 until about 5 p.m. each weekend with some events on Saturdays and others running both Saturdays and Sundays.
“It’s been a challenging year for sure for obvious reasons and of course, it felt like every time we were getting ready to plan something, the rules and regulations changed,” said Reay on Monday.
“But this summer, we’d long planned we aimed to do some outdoor activity and as we were planning that, it became known the City had a little bit of extra money because the Canada Day celebrations weren’t going ahead. So there’s been a synergy there that the City hired New West Theatre to produce an outdoor in the parks performance series that became Arts in the Parks, he said.
“Basically, every weekend starting July 10 all the way through to Sept. 11 will feature an outdoor in- the-park performance. There are four parks across the city we’re kind of cycling through so each weekend is only one performance at each park.”
Parks being utilized include Nicholas Sheran Park, Legacy Park, Henderson Lake and the Civic Centre park, he said.
“We thought we could take it all quadrants,” Reay said.
Acts were selected following a submission process and they are entirely local, Reay said.
“It’s celebrating the performing arts in Lethbridge is how we’re talking about it. We have all these talented performers who live here who haven’t been able to perform for a year-and-a-half,” he said.
“We thought what better way than to try and celebrate the summer and start to relaunch the performing arts. We thought this was a really great opportunity,” Reay said.
“It’s tricky not being able to perform because typically we’d do two big summertime indoor performances and that obviously can’t happen and it wasn’t able to happen last summer,” said Reay, adding a drive-in performance last year was successful.
“We wanted to shake it up a bit and make it more accessible to the general public.”
The series kicks off Saturday at the Civic Centre park with Kathy Zaborsky hitting the stage at 1 p.m. followed by North Stone, Junkman’s Quire, Little Lethbridge Opera Company and Eric Braun.
Three days of performances are scheduled for July 15-17 at Legacy Park, 400 Blackwolf Blvd. N., with the Lethbridge Shakespeare Performance Society running “A Midsummer’ NIght’s Dream” on the 15th and 16th at 7:30 p.m.
On July 17, Lehtbridge Musical Theatre will present Broadway karaoke at 1 p.m. followed by Jeff Godin, Bears Falling from Trees (a reading) and closing with the Southern Accord Chorus.
Nicholas Sheran Park will be the venue on July 24 with Hootenanny followed by Carl Brave Rock Napi stories and The Band Formerly Known as Karen Lewis & Pam.
In August, Legacy Park will be the venue Aug. 7, followed by the Civic Centre Aug. 14-15, Nicholas Sheran Aug. 21 and Civic Centre again on Aug. 28.
September performances are scheduled for the the 4th and 5th at Nicholas Sheran Park with the series closing Sept. 11 at Legacy Park.
A complete schedule can be found at New West’s website, newwestheatre.com Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
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